Editor’s Note: This is the latest in a series of Q&A interviews conducted by the Record-Bee with various candidates running in next week’s election. Bruno Sabatier, Mayor of the City of Clearlake, is a Supervisor-elect, taking over for outgoing District 2 Supervisor Jeff Smith. District 2 has a northern border along Highway 20 to the Colusa County line which forms the district’s eastern border. The District includes the majority of the City of Clearlake, Clearlake Park, Windflower Point, and a large stretch of Clear Lake’s shoreline.
Q: Lake County’s economy is not recovering quickly from the Great Recession of 2008. CAO Carol Huchinson recently said that the county’s budget is ‘bleak’. As a supervisor, what will be your first project aimed at improving Lake County’s financial situation?
A: Increasing our revenues should be our number one goal. There are two ways to do this: pass a tax or increase revenues through the taxes already in place. The county tried passing a tax this year in the June 2018 primary election. It did not pass. I would not be against trying to campaign for a tax measure, but it would need to be for a specific use and not general funds. Code enforcement and law enforcement are two of the main departments that I would support with a tax as it helps create a clean and safe foundation for the county residents, businesses, and staff to work with. However, there are many ways to increase our revenues without taxes. This path would slowly increase tax revenue over the years based on a plan rather than give us the relief that the county needs within the next year before the arduous task of taking on the 2019-2020 budget. The county has properties that it could sell, these would be one time monies, so it would not give us long term solutions, but short and long term solutions are needed simultaneously. If we unload certain properties then we would stop our need to maintain them, which takes up staff time. We also have many properties that are tax defaulted throughout the county. This means that for five years no property tax has been paid. We need to get those properties sold to homeowners who wish to invest in Lake County and not drain Lake County by keeping these properties with the same owners who don’t maintain or pay their property taxes. We need to desperately deal with this as property tax is one of the metrics that has really hurt our county since the 2008 crash. There are also new potential revenue streams such as cannabis. It’s too new for us to know how much we can benefit, if at all, from this new industry, but it is one we should watch carefully in order to ensure that the foundation is good for businesses to prosper and for our communities to not be negatively impacted by the addition of a new industry. There are impacts to all decisions that are made, we just need to make sure that the cost benefits are in our favor.
Q: Cost of construction is rising throughout the state. Fires have burned up more than 5 percent of Lake County’s housing stock. What is the best approach the county can take to improve housing opportunities for its residents?
A: Affordable housing is important. While construction costs are not under our control within the county, it is under our control to help solicit for developers to come and develop much needed opportunities for young families and for seniors. We should continue to help low income residents who wish to buy a home for their first time. The first time home buyer program is a good program that can really provide the support needed to obtain your first home. Tiny homes are also an option as well as an opportunity especially for those on fixed income or for those trying to transition from living on the streets.
Q: Until the middle of the last century, Lake County was a major tourist destination on the scale of Tahoe and Nevada County. Now, tourism dollars are a much smaller source of revenue in the county. How important will tourism be to Lake County’s future?
A: Tourism will always be important to Lake County. We are a destination for those traveling in the area or to those who live throughout the state. The beauty of our area is part of the draw, but our wineries and upcoming projects such as the Guenoc and Konocti projects will also be a great draw to our county. Our job though must also encompass the visual experience when going through our county to reach tourist destinations. This is why code enforcement and law enforcement are critical to providing a positive experience for those visiting us. We need to make sure that when going off the main paths through our county that the experience is just as good. In order to offer this positive experience, we need to make sure our housing stocks gets a fresh coat of paint, that yards are kept clean, that our roads are in a good state, and that tourists find the amenities they are looking for such as a good place to sleep, eat, and play. We have businesses here who are already offering those amenities, but we need more and we need to continue trying to enhance the experience using 21st century tools such as public wi-fi in our parks and public docks and augmented reality to give our tourists information about where they are and what they are looking at just by using a smart phone and GPS.
Q: Last year’s State Bill 1 (transportation funding) has been a point of contention since it was conceived. Caltrans and the League of California Cities among others have supported the bill, and oppose Proposition 6 which would repeal it. Proposition 6 supporters argue that the 12 cent gas tax hike caused by SB 1 is unaffordable and unnecessary. This is just one part of a discussion about infrastructure spending in Lake County, where in Clearlake Measure V has benefited road projects in the past year. As a supervisor, how will you seek to fund infrastructure improvements in Lake County?
A: Roads are foundational to enhancing the prospect of success in the future. SB1 is a much needed fund for cities and counties. Gas tax has not been hiked since 1994 and in 1994 hybrids did not exist, cell phones were larger than landline phones, and OJ Simpson was chased in his Bronco. Housing prices, food prices, gas prices, and especially benefits for workers have gone up increasingly making road material more expensive and road crews more expensive to contract with for projects. This has decreased the impact that the funds received by counties and cities can do to maintain the road system in their jurisdictions. SB1 is a result of no action to help fix our roads in over 20 years. Voting yes would take away the opportunities to fix our road system that is desperately in need of road repair. This affects us all. Bad roads cost drivers. Bad roads cost transit systems, first response departments and our businesses. We need to fix our roads and maintain them at a good quality. Good roads are good for our future. I will be voting NO on Prop 6 and I hope others will too.
Q: Lake County is lucky to have the community college branches it has, but its higher education offerings are less than those of many other California counties. Many young Lake County locals leave their home county to attend schools elsewhere. What can the board of supervisors do to establish more competitive higher education programs in Lake County?
A: The Board of Supervisors should be sitting down with both Woodland and Mendocino Community Colleges to help bring in more opportunities. I have had the pleasure of working for Woodland Community College and the future holds many positive prospects. Woodland is working on bringing back Bachelor Degree programs to its campus via Sacramento State University. There are more opportunities for more Bachelor Degree programs to come as well as they have healthy relationships with Sonoma State, Chico State, Sacramento State, and UC Davis. These opportunities are getting easier to consider with the internet being more conveniently accessible to our county residents. I have been working with the college to bring college classes to our county jail so that we can educate and give trade skills to a population that is more likely to go back to jail than succeed. With those new trade skills, their chance of success will only grow. Both Mendocino and Woodland are seeking to make this program start in the near future as talks continue between the county and both colleges. The county has the opportunity to utilize two different colleges to obtain the needs of our community. We should continue that work as well as working with Career Point to ensure that we are looking forward as to what our job labor market looks like and whether our schools are helping meet the labor market needs.
Q: If agriculture, which has become a well-established industry in Lake County, is to be protected in the long term, county laws will be important in doing so. In the case of Napa County, the 1965 Williamson Act protected agricultural land from being used for housing developments and the like. As a supervisor, what will you do now to protect agriculture in Lake County in the long term?
A: As a commissioner of the Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) I truly respect the protection of agricultural and open land. I believe in LAFCO and that they help our county and other jurisdictions make the correct decisions when expanding spheres of influence or borders. In Lake County, infill can easily happen within a jurisdiction rather than using agricultural land to help new development occur. As a resident of Lake County I also value the agricultural commodity that we have here and would love to see it continue to grow and become a bigger part of our tourism.
Our wineries, and soon cannabis businesses, are part of the movement in California where ag-tourism is one of the fastest growing economies in our state. One of the ideas that I’ll share with you is to expand our ag and use it not only as an economic revenue, but also as a way to protect us from wild fires. Many fire maps show the contours of ag land which shows me that a farmed area clean of dry brush and trees and humid from the constant watering needed to grow properly can offer us a buffer if not a barrier for fires. Since we are a county of agriculture and since we are seeking for ways to decrease the damage that future fires may strike us with, why not marry the two together. However, we must always be mindful of water when expanding our agriculture as well. While we are not dealing with the same drought factors of 2-3 years ago, we aren’t out of the woods completely.
Q: The County has extensive power to regulate cannabis businesses. While strict permit application processes ensure that only responsible growers do business here, they can also scare away potential Measure C revenue. Current supervisors have raised concerns stemming from the fact that cannabis has been a net loss for the county this year. In the next four years, what do you wish to see happen with cannabis in Lake County?
A: I think that looking at this year for cannabis revenue is too near sighted. We need to give it time to establish. Licensing has taken time to process correctly. Obtaining permits and the construction to establish the facilities to cultivate, process, manufacture, and transport a product takes time as these new businesses invest in their futures. I would suspect that starting next year we will get a better idea of how this new business is going to work within the confines of our laws. We need to make sure and give it time to mature and then look at data to see if our laws need to be liberalized, restricted, or remain the same. Patience and scrutiny will be the best plan for now to ensure we guide this new industry in the future in the proper direction for what is best for our community.
Q: What does the Native American population in Lake County need most from the board of supervisors that it is not getting now?
A: I have been working with the local tribes since my first meeting on the Clearlake City Council. We were the first city in California to approve of a Memorandum of Understanding to work with local tribes to ensure that they were present when any and all excavations occurred for projects within the city. It was also agreed upon that their approved archaeologist would be available to note all findings and to ensure that we were not destroying any sacred grounds and mishandling sacred artifacts. Our county has a vast wealth of Native heritage and in my opinion, this heritage itself can be an attraction for future tourism as well.
I know that there is a lot of trauma from the history that occurred when pioneers crossed the United States to Lake County and decided to call Lake County home. This trauma has not been rectified, nor is it often discussed by our leaders. This trauma still affects our county and especially those who are descendants of those tribes. I truly believe that with Supervisor Moke Simon and Supervisor Elect EJ Crandell that there will be a lot of opportunities to have those discussions and to attempt to heal the historical trauma that many of our Lake County residents hold.
Q: Clear Lake is often referred to as Lake County’s defining feature, yet it has suffered from high levels of cyanobacteria that limit its potential. Do you have a plan to clean up the lake?
A: I think there are two very important projects to support as much as possible. The Middle Creek Restoration Project which started many decades ago is nearing completion for funding and property acquisition. Funding from the state through the support of Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar Curry will allow us to finish the project. This project will restore the marshlands in the north shore area and give our lake the natural filtration system that has the potential to clean the overflow of nutrients that we see systematically come through the Middle Creek area.
Another major success is AB707, again with the help of Assemblymember Aguiar Curry. This has created the Blue Ribbon Committee where research will be done on the lake and then grant opportunities and other ways of funding the solutions will open up. We have partnered up with UC Davis researchers to gather data on our lake. We have to remember that our lake is almost a half million years old. It is possibly the oldest lake in the northern hemisphere. Most lakes would have become a pasture by now, but our lake, due to geological reasons remains a lake. In its natural form, it is very healthy, but this health does not provide for an attractive lake for tourists to enjoy during the hot summer days. By supporting these two projects, there is high hope that we can start making our lake more acceptable for recreational use and draw more tourism to our county.
